This morning I stopped by Digby’s place and found her post on the disturbing account of torture at Guantanamo that Scott Horton has been covering in Harpers:

The medical personnel involvement is sick and after all the stuff about force feeding and using prisoners’ psychological profiles for interrogation purposes, I guess I’m not as surprised as Horton is. But the fact that the white house consciously and knowingly used anal rape to control, interrogate and punish prisoners and went to some length to protect those who were doing it from scrutiny, still has the power to stun me. Are we really just going to let this stuff go? Really?

No, we can’t, and I can’t imagine anyone on either the left or the right who believes that America stands for something would think we should. And yet that is explicitly what Joe Conason is arguing for this morning when he says "Pardon the Bush Miscreants." He casts the quest for accountability in purely partisan terms when he speaks about Pat Leahy’s pursuit of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, saying that "he is certain to encounter ferocious resistance from most Republicans (and they will surely be joined by a faction of conservative Democrats, such as Connecticut’s independent senator, Joseph Lieberman)":

Considering the institutional reluctance in Washington to punish political offenders (especially when they happen to be Republicans), the president’s bipartisan approach to governing, and the very real sense that America faces more urgent issues in the economic emergency, there would seem to be little chance of real action.

These are not "political offenses," these are crimes. And despite the propensity of those who committed them to wrap themselves in the flag and claim they did it for America, there is no way to justify anal rape as an expression of anything other than extreme sadism.

Moreover, we’ve been down the "more urgent issues to attend to" road before, with a stunning lack of success. We were told in 2006 that we had to chuck the part of the Constitution that said we had the obligation to impeach a President who acted with reckless disregard for the law because we had more important things to deal with, like getting out of Iraq. I actually believed that one at the time, but it didn’t take long to realize that I was wrong, and nobody had any intention of mounting a serious attempt to extricate ourselves from Iraq. The carnage continued to be unpopular and it made a heck of a campaign issue in 2008, which is all our political leaders seemed concerned about.

Conason argues that, unlike South Africa, Americans in this new world order just don’t have the stomach to seriously examine the past:

Is there a way for President Obama to pursue that responsibility without inflicting vengeance or humiliation? Perhaps he ought to consider the creation of a presidential commission whose aims would be purely investigative — and encourage the participation of those implicated in the abuses of the past by promising a complete pardon to anyone who testifies fully, honestly and publicly.

With that gesture, he would acknowledge the importance of uncovering the facts, no matter how ugly, while magnanimously binding up the nation’s wounds. He could leave the issue of criminal prosecution to international authorities that can act without any partisan taint. And he could seek truth without vengeance.

Can we stop casting this as vengeance? Can we stop painting people who believe that something terrible was lost during the last eight years, something moral and decent and good at the core of the American soul, as little more than "angry" and "vindictive?" And can we stop assuming that there is something magnanimous about a "bipartisanship" that exists only when both sides agree to walk into the next room and pretend that the pile of wreckage we leave behind, the one that nobody wants to look, isn’t still on fire?

There’s something really disturbing about the assumption that "magnanimously binding up the nation’s wounds" by fobbing off the responsibility for enforcing our laws onto international courts represents some kind of "greater good." Or that people who still believe accountability in government is the very foundation of the rule of law simply haven’t moved on to a higher moral plane, where "truth" can be sought without "vengeance."

The political discourse has become increasingly polarized over the last eight years, but that’s not — as "bipartisan" fetishists found out during the stimulus debate — because all sides are equal and everyone is arguing in good faith, just waiting for a grand unifier to raise them up from their bickering. It’s because the nation was being run like an organized crime syndicate by crooks, and the appropriate response was outrage.

As Glenn Greenwald notes this morning, Conason’s argument rests on a disregard for treaties that the US has bound itself to as well as a distortion of the opinion polling on this matter (something Jim White has been pointing out for days). Contrary to his assertions, demanding accountability isn’t part of some partisan victory lap, it’s the duty of a responsible citizenry. The willingness to pursue justice regardless of the political appetite for it is the only way to keep things from disappearing down the memory hole when a new group sets themselves up in Washington, DC, and shift from outsiders looking in to people protecting their own prerogatives. We have 5% of the world’s population, but we incarcerate 25% of its prison population. How can someone seriously argue that we should exempt our political elites from the laws we so ruthlessly enforce on the poor, expressly because they’ve been so successful in polarizing the political climate as part of their criminal enterprise?

Conason was an important voice in the anti-war movement. But when he cast the issue of accountability for torture in partisan terms, he promptly fell into his own trap. There is something more important than political will as a function of public opinion, as anyone who was part of the small minority arguing against the invasion of Iraq should know. We don’t live in a box, and this isn’t all about making ourselves feel good. We inflicted a lot of pain on the world, and they are looking to see how we deal with it. We owe them, and ourselves, more than a "group hug."

104 Responses
to “Conason: “Pardon the Torturers””

If we do not prosecute these crimes and punish the perpetrators, they will only return again, just as the did after Watergate and Iran/Contra. Each time they get off because “we must move on and put this behind us” they return more evil than before and commit more heinous crimes than before.

We know for a fact that the U.S. Military and CIA plant and/or payoff some BigMedia commentators. Part of making sure the games are not exposed is not revealing your hand too much, since it might raise suspicions.

Conason’s always seemed a little “off” to me, and this line of thought he’s advancing really raises my antennae. Perhaps he’s revealing his true motivations a little too much now?

Some are simply cocktail weenie-ists who just suck up to whoever is in power with their coverage, like Ron Brownnosestein, but this kind argument from Conason is way beyond that.

I’m absolutely stunned that Congress sees a need to investigate steroid use in professional sports, but anal rape of prisoners…charged with no crimes…locked up for years without due process…isn’t important enough to investigate! What is the matter with our country? This is NOT the country I grew up in.

The Bush White House vehemently objected to provisions of the law dealing with rape by instrumentality.

is that SICK?..there’s more;

When House negotiators pressed to know why, they were met first with silence and then an embarrassed acknowledgement that a key part of the Bush program included invasion of the bodies of prisoners in a way that might be deemed rape by instrumentality under existing federal and state criminal statutes

got that?

the bush administration actually acknowledged that their “enhanced” interigation was raping people with tools

That’s one of the few ways in which this makes any sort of sense. Joe of all people should remember what happened when we didn’t punish the Iran-Contra crowd — they came back to run our foreign policy and the Pentagon under GW Bush.

I like and respect Joe Conason, but I disagree with him on this. With this important caveat, if we are going to do this half-assed, then we are better off not doing it at all.
I have great concerns with Pat Leahy as our field general. My take on him is that he battles a lot like General McClellan, of Civil War infamy.

He casts the quest for accountability in purely partisan terms when he speaks about Pat Leahy’s pursuit of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission

there is a way we can prove that the partisan argument is untrue — and that is to include the policies and actions of the clinton administration in the investigation. if we didn’t engage in torture by proxy during the clinton years, the accusations published by jane mayer will be disproven. but if we did, Ds should be held accountable as well as Rs.

if we refuse to apply the same level of accountability to the Clinton era as the last eight years, then maybe Conason is right.

Then I would think all republicans would agree that all violent criminals torturers, rapists and abductors should be set free. I have never met a perpetrator who didn’t think they had a really good reason for doing what they did.

The bush administration is no different. It’s the mark of a perpetrator.

I didn’t do it. (that’s what we heard at first).

If I did it, it wasn’t that big a deal, I didn’t do it that hurt, it didn’t really hurt anyone that much. (minimize)

They made me do it. The terrorist made us act this way because they act this way. (blame).

All batterers, rapists, and violent criminals use this rational. I have never, ever met one who didn’t.

To give some overall context to this, it is probably helpful to look at the “Egpytianization” of interrogation that seemed to be an affirmative decision, post 9-11. Wright’s The Looming Tower discusses in one chapter how Egypt’s intel services engaged in and taped sodomy of drugged children and then used tapes to blackmail the boys, sons of men who were involved with Zawahiri, so that the boys would attempt assassinations for the intel services. The boys were caught and executed by Zawahiri (all during a period when he was primarily focused on the Egyptian government, not attacking the US), but this offers up some of what our intel services here knew about Egyptian handling of “interrogations.”

This is the kind of thing that was a part of “taking the gloves off” and it is why depraved is the word that come to mind so frequently. Higazy swears (and given his confession to an untruth, there’s some outside indicia of crediblity) that his US questioning (the questioning that Comey *investigated* and said we could all be proud of, despite the false confession) included threats of having Egyptian’s take his sister in to be raped. There were threats to detainees that their mothers would also be kidnapped and used for gang rapes. In Iraq, we were kidnapping and holding hostage women and children to get their male family members to turn themselves in as insurgents, whether they were or not (the threat being that their families would be raped at prisons like Abu Ghraib if they didn’t show up).

With with Panetta and others saying that we will be continuing to use kidnap and shipment to third party countries for “interrogation” of our kidnap victims by the third party countries, it’s pretty interesting that no one bothered to ask about why we’d be wanting to have third party countries do the interrogations? Don’t ask, don’t tell – a whole new set of applications.

How often has the US gone through this cycle of letting elite criminals get away with their crimes, only to see them return to commit even worse crimes? Before Watergate and Iran Contra, there was that conspiracy to overthrow Roosevelt that General Butler exposed. Not to mention Prescott Bush working with the Nazi’s during WW2. Think how different the world might be today if the Bush crime family had been taken down for trading with the enemy back then.

It is the jarring hypocrisy of it all. Here we have high officials and their agents signing off on and committing the most heinous of acts and yet even though we have no problem imprisoning large parts of our population suddenly we can do nothing to imprison these guys who did things that were much worse than those of people now serving time.

i’m so sick of this “political crime/offense” bullshit. Like prosecuting Liddy was the “criminalization of politics.” Bullshit. Crime is crime. And these are barbaric. That’s not what MY America (and the Aemrica of the others here) is about.

As to economic issues and priorities, you have to first and foremost realize that depraved societies fail. Secondly, if we simply commit the process to the rule of law, we already have institutions in place to handle the issues. If you want to start from scratch with politicized commissions (and how will they not be?) then you are talking about diverting huge amounts of time and effort away from the other pressing issues, such as the economic collapse, occupations, health care, etc.

If you just commit the process to the law, Obama is no more distracted from pursuing other major initiatives than he is whenever anyone in DOJ brings criminal cases.

John Dean has emphasized the notion of “process”. The process matters. The law matters. How we deal with lawlessness matters.

What Conason and his ilk are arguing is that the law is irrelevant. Crime and punishment are based on who you are, not what you do. This is as un-American an argument as it is possible to make. And it is at the heart of the systemic rot and corruption all around us.

For the Conason’s of the world, politicians casting aside the rule of law or CEOs of multinational corporations enriching themselves on corruption are simply minor inconveniences. They fail to see such behavior is a direct assault on the bedrock foundation of the United States of America — a nation of laws. An imperfect nation admittedly, built upon imperfect laws, but both may yet be perfected if we stick to our principles and our process and strive to improve both.

Meanwhile, for all the pretty words about reconciliation, that can only be achieved when the parties involved sincerely desire it. I have yet to see any evidence that any of Conason’s “miscreants” (a woefully inadequate word for the conduct in question) have any real remorse or desire to be reconciled with those they have harmed. Without such repentance, there can be no reconciliation.

21 – Absolutely Selise. Of couse, Obama putting Clinton in charge at State, despite what his advisors have to have told him about the Wm Clinton’s rendition issues, pretty much signaled what he was going to do (nothing) about renditions to torture imo. Who would take the chance of putting her on at State, then sending her out to do the “we don’t torture” sales pitch worldwide, while at the same time having her husband investigated at home?

Criminalizing policy differences is a framing narrative. We no longer get real discussion of issues. We get narratives and talking points whose goal is to let our ruling classes do what they want to do and get away with it.

In a rational legal system, “crimes” are not crimes because of who does them. They are crimes because of what they do to society. Individuals have other recourse through personal liability or breach of contract claims. Society as a whole is at risk because of the behavior we deem criminal. That’s what justifies our using the awesome power of the state to investigate, prosecute, imprison or “judicially” kill you. The abuse of that power is the sum and substance of George Bush’s crimes.

Republicans and the DC pundit class that are aligned with them (nearly a redundant description) are complicit in the Bush excesses. It is likely that individual senior Democrats are as well. Complicit by silence, cooperation, enabling, approving, protecting.

Pundits, their media platforms, and most especially the conglomerates that own them benefited wildly during the reign of George Bush. Entire industries, mercenaries and private intelligence services exist because of them. Others benefited enormously when Bush chose to ignore laws, rewrite them in favor of private concerns, or immunize actors for violating them. Their pundits are returning a small favor in exchange. It’s what friends are for.

The question is how many Dems want on that gravy train and how many want to run a government in the interests of the governed. History says the latter happens only when the governed are in your face.

Conason was a brilliant, indispensable exposer of the Clinton Cockhunt Industrial Complex .. since then I think he’s been overtaken by bloggers .. esp crack investigators like Marcy and some of Josh’s crew ..

37 – uh, not in the middle of a vow of silence I can’t, but otherwise, yeah ;)

One reason he has to say that is bc right now there are people (unless things have changed remarkably from the Ghost Planes accounts) who have continued to be held in Syria and Egypt at least, if not elsewhere solely bc we sent them there to be “questioned” So what happens to them now? If we make it official that our government is not to do that – then what about the people where it has already been done and they are still in holes somewhere? Do we acknowledge them? If so, then what? Embarassment to the goverments that have them? Denials, disputes, etc. – do we produce evidence or not? Do those countries kill and dump bodies (apparently a condoned US reponse these days)or release and just make more threats and claim more lies? Do we acknowledge, but also affirm that we are not really planning on fulfilling our obligations under the Torture Conventions?

Of course none of it is ez – it hasn’t been an ez topic for years now, though, and Obama should have known as a Senator, much less a year or so into his campaign, the real and realistic ramifications of saying, “no one is above the law”

…look at the “Egpytianization” of interrogation that seemed to be an affirmative decision, post 9-11. Wright’s The Looming Tower discusses in one chapter how Egypt’s intel services engaged in and taped sodomy of drugged children and then used tapes to blackmail the boys, sons of men who were involved with Zawahiri, so that the boys would attempt assassinations for the intel services. The boys were caught and executed by Zawahiri (all during a period when he was primarily focused on the Egyptian government, not attacking the US), but this offers up some of what our intel services here knew about Egyptian handling of “interrogations.”

mary, i don’t have The Looming Tower . do you recall what year(s) that was? also do you know of any online essay (or reference of any kind) so i don’t have to go to the library)?.

We better figure it out because these scum will be settling back in our towns and cities.

Only Traitors Torture
The number of people not covered by Geneva conventions would be ZERO.

That these creeps would cooperate with a Truth and Reconciliation Commission is laughable ,Think Rove, Myers, Alberto , I just don’t recall then get real with a Colombo type of guy hard as nails CRIMINAL investigation.

This also gets back to a point that I often make. Obama represents the return of the Establishment, the elites of the Clinton and Bush I Presidencies. This Establishment rejected Bush II because he did not give them the deference they thought they deserved and because they thought he was too extreme and executed his policies poorly. But on the fundamentals of those policies whether it was rendition or deregulation of financial markets they all agreed.

Jane is exactly right. This isn’t vengeance, this isn’t partisan, this is a recognition that transgressions were committed and need to be acknowledged in an official venue. A press conference doesn’t cut it, a blog post doesn’t cut it, an editorial in the New York Times doesn’t fulfill the obligation.

As Jane says, the punditry is nearly united in claiming that “crimes by politicians” are political not criminal acts. A better Rovian misdescription I have yet to see.

The Beltway doesn’t seem to care that massive, serial, possibly continuing crimes were committed. (Is Don Siegelman free yet? Are Guantanamo and our secret prisons closed? Have reparations to the wronged been made? Have illegal domestic spying and political prosecutions been stopped and their damage undone?)

The Beltway is in full Animal House mode. If the Delts throw food at the Sigs, all hell will break loose and the dean won’t show the film on Friday. Well, reality bites, tuition needs to be paid and so does the rent. Ask Main Street. The Beltway should know realtiy’s coming whether they like it or not.

I hate to beat a dead horse, but I will. Bush is a sadist, he repeatedly escaped any punishment for his sadism, and he transmitted and validated the belief that sadistic behavior is acceptable.

I’m disgusted at the complicity of the press in this issue. If I remember correctly, the press was horrified when Abner Louima was sodomized by the NYPD. Oh, wait: it wasn’t one of our “finest” condoning the behavior.

Let me add my voice to Jane’s and the many commenters: It’s not the men and women who conduct the torture who need to be investigated. It’s the leadership.

It is not just the benefits that media corporations received during the Bush era that pundits are paying back. It is the problem of the complicity of the media and the punditocracy during those years. How do pundits write and speak now about the atrocities and disasters of the worst President in our history when they were mostly cheerleading it all at the time?

How can someone seriously argue that we should exempt our political elites from the laws we so ruthlessly enforce on the poor, expressly because they’ve been so successful in polarizing the political climate as part of their criminal enterprise?

When one is a member of the ruling elite, one wants to preserve this notion of being above the law, as that is a great source of power. When Conason describes justice as “truth with vengeance,” he is floating a disturbing canard. If the ruling elites can torture innocents (and let’s face it, most of those we tortured were innocent..that’s the real point in torturing people, after all) and get away with it, any notion of justice at all is flushed down the loo forever. And so with it goes civil society and decency, never mind “democracy.”

That’s the real point of all this. Conason is promoting lawlessness and dictatorship, albeit indirectly. His sympathies lies with those who will one day return to commit ever greater crimes. Because it’s impolite to prosecute criminals!

Crimes by politicians are political not criminal acts; they are therefore beyond the power of the state to investigate or prosecute. By that reasoning, paedophilic sex between priest and altar boy is holy. We shouldn’t inquire further for the good of Holy Mother Church.

Self-dealing, self-deceptions like that are what makes the world so welcoming a habitat for evil.

If the “Rule of Law” was applicable to Bill Clinton lying about getting a blow job in the Oval Office, then it is applicable to Bush and Co ordering torture and rape and lying about the reasons to invade Iraq.

You may not be on your own. For those who have been following the Binyam Mohamed case (I am sure there are a few)it now transpires our Foreign Office actaully asked for the Bellingham “threat” letter. I wonder ehy? Maybe this issue will come to a head outside the USA.

Actually it is the same country you grew up in. The only difference is that what has been pretty common practice since thruout our history is now starting to see the light of day because the bushies were so arrogant and full of hubris that they did in the open what was done in secret for at least the last 60 year.
Or are all here so naive that you believe that nothing like this ever happened before bush came along
We tortured both NVA and VC during the Vietnam War. We used “field interrogation techniques” against the North Koreans and the Chinese during the Korean War, we used the same techniques against the Germans and the Japanese during WWII.
History is written by the winners, it is always the “losers” who resort to torture.
In our worldview we have always pictured ourselves as the “white hats” in war. Our side has always been that of the good guy riding to the rescue, the one who, like John Wayne, always treated his captives gently in accordance with the rules of the old west. Which,BTW, were just made up by hollywood movies and dime novels.
Our history is the same as that of all other empires in the world. We killed and tortured innocents(Native Americans anyone?) We stole their land and put them in concentration camps(American Indians again)(just in case you believe all that was back in the 19th century try the Japanese Americans in WWII) We killed and tortured prisoners-Andersonville- taken in war(the Union side during the Civil War)
We invaded countries over the years that did nothing to us-numerous Islands in the Caribbean Basin and Latin America in defense of big corporations in the early 1900s(read the USMC history and the bio of Chesty Puller) We made up a country then invaded it to “protect” it(Panama and the Canal Zone) When WWII was over we assisted other Empires in regaining the terrority lost to the Japanese.
In the 50s and 60s we overthrew govts that had been elected by their citizens because they were not on “our”side.(Iran in the 1950s) then forced leaders on them(the Shah of Iran)
We are not innocent by any means, there is much blood on our hands. We have acted thruout our history exactly like any other empire. Except, because of evolving standards-the John Wayne/Roy Rogers/Gene Autry/Matt Dillon syndrome-we decided in the 60s that we did not want to know what we did not know. IOW, what had been done, more or less openly, the govt started to do in secret.
Nothing has changed, we have just closed our eyes and pretended that the world was just like a movie western and we were the white hats, the good guys. With our eyes closed we pretended to ourselves that we would “never” do the nasty things that our enemies did. But we not only did those nasty things, we still do.

56 – I don’t know of an online source, but I will try to put in a quote and maybe if you google the quoted text it will pull up a source?

The Chapter is 12, “The Boy Spies” beginning at p 213. It looks like it took place in 1995 (remember how many people were so surprised at hijackers being Egyptian and the street reactions in Egypt? – It’s not like the enhanced interrogation approaches including child sodomy really stabilized the populations taht much, eh?)

In April, Egyptian intelligence learned that Zawahiri had chaired a meeting of al-Jihad in Khartoum, that included leading members of the rival Islamic group – a troublesome development.

p213

Mubarak’s security forces fanned out all across Egypt … Houses were burned. Suspects disappeared. Sometimes a mother was dragged out on the street and stripped naked, and her children were warned that she would be raped if their brother was not present the next time they came. Mubarak instituted an anti-terrorism law that made it a crime to even express sympathy for the terrorist movements. Five new prisons were built …

To deal with Zawahiri, Egyptian intelligence agents devised a fiendish plan. They lured a thirteen-year-old boy named Ahmed into an apartment witht eh promise of juice and videos. Ahmed was the son of … a senior member of al-Jihad. The boy was drugged and soomized, when he awakened, he was confronted with photographs of the homosecual activity and threatened with the prospect of having them shown to his father. …

Egyptian intelligence forced him to recruit another child, Mus’ab, whose father … was also in al-Jihad and served as the treasurer for al-Qaeda. Mus’ab endured the same humiliating initiation of drugs and sexual abuse and was forced to turn against his family. The agents taught the boys how to plant microphones in their own homes and photograph documents. A number of arrests followed because of the information produced by the boy spies.

The Egyptian agents then decided to use the boys to kill Zawahiri. ..

No time for more – I’m a slow bad typist (I don’t try to correct typos in my sutff, just the quotes)and about to leave home so I won’t have the book with me, but it gives you a feel. I know that Mayer also reported at one point about a story of the FBI getting someone from Egypt who was duct taped, like a mummy and IIRC there was something later about someone (maybe al-Libi?) that the CIA sent to Egypt the same way, kind of to show how well they “got it” but I can’t recall where I saw that so I won’t swear it’s correct.

You can see, though, where you combine the retraction of the Geneva Conventions, a pro-torture, pro-sodomy chief law enforcement officer and CIC, where you might get the trickle down on things like taking family members hostage, sodomy, etc.

But hey, let’s just leave the conversation at, “what’s so bad about splashing water on KSM’s face”
‘Kay?

The Guardian suggests that the FO asked the Bush administration to tell it it couldn’t release details about Binyam’s mistreatment, implying that the FO wanted cover for its own complicity.

It could have been because of British complicity in his torture — though submitting a list of questions is unrelated to how Bush had them asked. It could also have been because they wanted the Bush administration to put in writing the threats it had made in private.

that’s perfect – thank you. even if i can’t find any online references, i can use your comment. as you note, it ties in precisely with jane mayer’s account of the genesis of “extraordinary rendition” during the clinton administration.

We have known that little fact for a very long time….and part of why this is so carry. Many of us did know, maybe not all the ramifications. About the commentary…where are the law and order folks when we need them? Oh, I know, shouting at immigrants. Please, let’s shout louder, for the sake of our country. Where is the outspoken media, please? What would Cronkite say?

at some point it is going to become clear that we have a national DUTY to enforce the law .. equally ..with favor to none .. and that doing so isn’t a matter of discretion .. nor a symptom of partisanship ..

we are AMERICA gawd-dammit and one of our bedrock pinciples is equality under the law .. that NO ONE is above the law ..

e’re to enow some 62% of the nation already understands and supports the idea of investigating and indicting and convicting these miscreants ..

as more and more disgusting factiods about what has been done “in our name” come out .. surely the impetus for enforcing the law and the tenets of our society will prevail ..

mah gawd .. i HOPE that’s true .. i really do ..

i served this nation for some years as an officer of marines .. and i can personally attest to the fact that i didn’t do so to establish a system whereby criminals at the highest levels of our government could trash the constitution and violate the law with impunity and walk away scot-free ..

This issue of inhumane brutality and sadism probably is a factor in the high rate of suicides for those in the services and to the failure to be able to adjust to peacetime life again. Many said that they just wanted to get back to Iraq because they didn’t feel that they could return to the States.

The rule of law is an expression of a higher law: that life is sacred. If we do not follow up on this with justice demanded for those who tortured, we are saying that savagery is okay and that life is not sacred.

63 – I think it’s fine that you didn’t think of those implications, but Obama had to have, well before he even started his campaign, esp with his Senate assignment.

Arar was one of the blackholed, but it was Canadian efforts (not US) that got him released. Kagan (Solic Gen) and Holder (AG) as Obama’s picks apparently agree, from their questioning by him, with Lindsey Graham on the concept of forever detentions of those “suspected” (and yes, he specified suspected, and they still went along with him), so no, I don’t think there will be any efforts to get people out of their black holes, esp if it might be embarassing. IIRC, Canada was also trying to get back two other Canadians that Syria had taken in and “questioned” for the US, and whose questioning (along with some nifty GITMOized questioning of Khadr) apparently led to the decision by now-Pepsico Gen Counsel, then DAG, Larry Thompson to sign off of the Arar shipment to Syria.

Hey- there’s an idea. Maybe instead of a truth and reconciliation commission, we can just buy the world a CokePepsi?

For a long time, there was a big time blogger (was it Clemons?) who would sing the praises of Bellinger as one of the good guys. I seem to remember a post going up at Huffpo about what a good guy he was on about the same day that he was in Britain saying that he (Bellinger) couldn’t really say that waterboarding US soldiers would be torture. And of course, the principals’ sessions and lawyers sessions keep coming out.

So when someone at the FO wanted a letter they could use to cover up involvement in crimes, going to Bellinger for it was like ringing a bell for one of Pavlov’s dogs.

Sadly, the biggest criminals have always gotten away with their crimes. We have never had 1 justice system for all, neither have we any real “bedrock” principles.
We have always had 2 different systems of justice in this country-under both dem and rethug-where the rich come under 1 system and the rest of us just get screwed.
We are not now and never have been the altruistic country that helps other countries and only fights wars because they are “good” wars.
We are not the “white hats” that legand portrays, we are an amoral empire and we do anything that those who we have entrusted to make these kinds of decisions-to keep both our politicians and we the peoples hands clean-deem necessary(pragmatic) to continue our way of life.(we run on cheap oil, well lets declare a premptive war against Iraq-and BTW, the neocons want us to attack Iran for the oil also) (low taxes to keep the people on their spending binge-well hell, borrow the money to fight the wars)
Always remember, those who have the gold make the rules. The rest of us are all guilty of something in the eyes of the law.

No, that is not the reason. I fought in Vietnam and served a total of 12 years. What I discovered is that when a person is placed into a situation that is very different from his life prior to entering the service, one becomes divorced from that life and after being in war or any other stressful position for a long time it becomes extremely hard to readjust back to that old life. You find that you have nothing in common with the insular people of your past. You change your outlook, you feel that you can not even connect with family and friends. The only friends/family that you feel you have is your friends/unit in the military.
Also, over the last 60 years most people have become a step removed from what I would call “real” life. We don’t kill our own food, we are removed from nature and the life/death cycle of nature in the raw. To a large number of people, even after training, war is a shattering experience. I had 2 cousins who spent a year in Vietnam, one came back injured the other did not. They both killed themselves because they could not reintigrate themselves into society.Going from combat to a totally different world in less than 24 hours is also not conducive to reintergrating into society. What were normal reactions in combat are not normal reactions on the block.

Life is not sacred. Any reading of history will tell you that. What laws we have are made for only one reason. That reason is so that people can live together in unrelated groups without fear of attack and that those who committ offences against those laws that the polity deemed necessary are removed from that polity.
While both the christian bible and islams koran give us high standards that we all claim to honor, we in fact honor them only by word, not deed.

In Iraq, we were kidnapping and holding hostage women and children to get their male family members to turn themselves in as insurgents, whether they were or not (the threat being that their families would be raped at prisons like Abu Ghraib if they didn’t show up).

I think it started with the hunt for Saddam. The story was that the US military had a big board diagramming all of Saddam’s relations and associates, and their relatives and their relatives’ relatives — an exponential series of persons linked by seven degrees of separation to Saddam. They threatened the innocent to come clean as to the whereabouts of the persons who might know the whereabouts of Saddam. Those who were slow to offer information were either tortured or saw their wives and children sodomized and raped. They were in a big hurry to catch the Ace of Spades and stopped at nothing. That’s how Abu Ghraib got started. It’s also why the insurgents attempted to bomb the prison early on. Word had gotten out. Most of those humiliated probably by that time preferred death to dishonour.

Exactly. Just because the political allies of the guilty say “this is all political” doesn’t mean it is.

BTW, Jane: While I agree with everything you’ve said here, WRT the post title I really think we have to be sticklers about not putting something in quotation marks unless the person in question actually said or wrote those very words. Taking out the quote marks makes the same impression without giving a false one.

The U.S. Army has been detaining Iraqi women to help track down husbands or fathers who are suspected terrorists, according to documents released Friday and an interview with a female detainee who was released Thursday after four months in prison.

A series of e-mails written by U.S. soldiers and an internal Army memo, all released Friday in response to a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, describe two cases of women who were imprisoned because American officials wanted information about their husbands.
…
The U.S. detention of female prisoners is a sensitive issue for the Iraqi populace, which considers the mistreatment of a woman a dishonor to her family. Iraqis find it particularly offensive that foreign male officers are holding female prisoners, as many Iraqis fear that U.S. soldiers will treat them disrespectfully.

I like the “disrespectful” part, what with the companion stories coming out about how vehement the Bushies were to keep access to anal rape on the table.

the bush administration actually acknowledged that their “enhanced” interigation was raping people with tools

this is one sick man?

Don’t forget the Abu Ghraib photos that haven’t yet been made public.
Don’t forget the people who were “interrogated” to death.

I think that if you produced detailed reports on each individual involved and their activites/behavior, from front-lines up to the president, where the person’s name, position, party affiliation, governmental office and so on were redacted, you could let people judge their behavior anonymously.

I have thought about the “good soldier” dilemma off and on for decades and the only way I see to move forward is to forgive the front-line soldier who was ‘following orders’. It can’t be good for the future of the services to punish people who have committed to following orders. But, for those who are charged with upholding the military law, code and conduct there has to be a measuring up. Did they uphold their position?

It’s important too, to remember that when one gives an order to have something done that they are responsible for what is done. Their hands aren’t clean just because they didn’t do it personally.

You have no hope. Conason is saying it because he thinks it’s consensual in the centre-left and it probably is. They are going to get away with it because, basically, too many Democrats are complicit imo.